"Elevators": OutKast
Production: OutKast
Album: ATLiens
‘I live to the beat like you live check to check/ if it don’t move your feet/ then I don’t eat/ so we like neck to neck.’
It is no wonder that Hiro Murai and Donald Glover picked this song to end season 1 of Atlanta, a show rooted both in its physical environment and one that is in constant conversation with the genre of music it portrays. There is often an image of the Hip Hop artist in the popular imagination. It is an image that is concurrent with dominant themes and motifs in popular music videos (I mean if I listed them it would take too long.) What Elevators does is expose the smoke and mirrors of that image and while Big Boi asserts that OutKast are on the come-up, and he’s bringing everyone with them, their success is fragile. Andre’s verse at the end is a sobering reminder that the relationship between the artist and the fan can be intensely co-dependent. In an age where we often deify celebrity Three Stacks reminds us that if we don’t fuck with the music there’s no difference between us.
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